Brown macroalgae have attracted great attention as an alternative feedstock for biorefining.
Although direct conversion of ethanol from alginates (major components of brown …

One major conundrum of modern microbiology is the large pangenome (gene pool) present
in microbes, which is much larger than those found in complex organisms such as humans …

Extensive genomic diversity within coexisting members of a microbial species has been
revealed through selected cultured isolates and metagenomic assemblies. Yet, the cell-by …

Viruses infecting prokaryotic cells (phages) are the most abundant entities of the biosphere
and contain a largely uncharted wealth of genomic diversity. They play a critical role in the …

Interactions with microbes affect many aspects of animal biology, including immune system
development, nutrition and health. In vertebrates, the gut microbiota is dominated by a small …

Background The photic zone of aquatic habitats is subjected to strong physicochemical
gradients. To analyze the fine-scale variations in the marine microbiome, we collected seven …

Homologous recombination (HR) enables the exchange of genetic material between and
within species. Recent studies suggest that this process plays a major role in the …

Third-generation sequencing has penetrated little in metagenomics due to the high error
rate and dependence for assembly on short-read designed bioinformatics. However, second …

Highlights•Prokaryotic populations are composed of multiple and diverse clonal
lineages.•These lineages carry different flexible gene pools, many collected in genomic …

Ecological differentiation between strains of bacterial species is shaped by genomic and
metabolic variability. However, connecting genotypes to ecological niches remains a major …